Arch – Type

“The archetype in itself is empty and purely formal, nothing but a facultas praeformandi, a possibility of representation which is given a priori. The representations themselves are not inherited, only the forms, and in that respect they correspond in every way to the instincts, which are also determined in form only. The existence of the instincts can no more be proved than the existence of the archetypes, so long as they do not manifest themselves concretely.” (Jung, 1968)

Additional insight from the Jungian scholar, John Haule (2011);

“The investigation of the language archetype allows us to list at least nine factors that describe what an archetype is:

An archetype is a species’-universal pattern

Of meaningful recognition, imagination and behavior

That resembles behaviors in closely related species,

Allowing us to trace a hypothetical line of inheritance back to a (possibly extinct) ancestor species,